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LXer Weekly Roundup for 27-April-2014

In the LXWR this week we have the founder of OpenBSD creating a fork of OpenSSL in the wake of Heartbleed, Out Of The Park Baseball 15 is released for Linux, Ken Starks asks what you would do to improve Linux, the death of net neutrality is coming and should Microsoft open source Windows XP? The question has been asked before and my opinion is yes they should..but they won't. Enjoy!

Microservers and the hurry up and wait conundrum: Fifteen years ago Linux was going to take over the world. Today, Linux is everywhere and no one blinks when a company builds on an open source stack. Microservers may be the same way. But this revolution will take some time to play out. In our microserver special report, Nick Heath noted that microservers, ARM and Intel-based, are being used for specific workloads such as serving Web content, but enterprises are all about multipurpose computing for a wide range of applications.

5 key insights on the transition from Windows to Linux: When I began my current job at Algoma University as the systems librarian, I really had no idea what I was getting into. Despite a decade in library information technology (IT), I felt nervous over my primary task: to help develop and administer Evergreen, an open source library catalogue system. The problem? My experience was almost totally in the world of Windows.

Programming is fun the free software column: It come as no surprise that we are facing a crisis in education, with children being taught to use computers but not understand them. Despite a need for change being identified, the situation does not appear to be improving.

What Would You Do to Improve Linux?: I’ve spent a good share of my time asking myself what would have to change in order to make Linux on the desktop a viable choice for the mainstream user. I became curious enough to ask you a question: if you could wave your magic wand and change only one thing about Linux or even the Linuxsphere in general, what would it be? Let’s take a look at what some of you had to say.

OpenBSD founder wants to bin buggy OpenSSL library, launches fork: In the wake of the Heartbleed bug fiasco, members of the OpenBSD project have forked the popular OpenSSL library with the aim of creating a new version that they say will be more trustworthy. Even though OpenSSL is open source software, for a full two years its entire development community managed to overlook the crucial bug that eventually triggered a web-wide panic. The library has since been patched to address the flaw, but fallout from the crisis is still being felt, and the programmer whose error caused all the ruckus says there just aren't enough people scrutinizing the OpenSSL code to spot difficult-to-find bugs. The LibreSSL project wants to change that. A fork of OpenSSL, LibreSSL was created by members of the highly security-conscious OpenBSD operating system community – including its cantankerous founder Theo de Raadt, who has publicly criticized OpenSSL as a project "not developed by a responsible team."

F.C.C., in ‘Net Neutrality’ Turnaround, Plans to Allow Fast Lane: The new rules, according to the people briefed on them, will allow a company like Comcast or Verizon to negotiate separately with each content company – like Netflix, Amazon, Disney or Google – and charge different companies different amounts for priority service.

Ubuntu 14.01 LTS: Great changes, but sssh don't mention the...: The future is here, or at least the next five years of it for Ubuntu fans. Canonical has released Ubuntu 14.04 Long-Term Support (LTS) release, meaning the Linux shop will be supporting this distro until 2019. Significantly, this is likely the first look that more conservative users will get at the direction Ubuntu has been pursuing since the release of 12.04 back in 2012. As I noted in the beta review, Ubuntu LTS releases understandably tend toward the conservative end of the spectrum when it comes to new features. You're not going to see Unity 8 in this release, nor will there be any trace of the Mir graphics stack which Canonical is hoping will one day support both its desktop and mobile offerings. However, for those who only upgrade when LTS releases come around, the picture is much different. The changes since 12.04 (the last LTS release) are significant and – apart from one major exception – very welcome.

Scripting a 'Find-and-Replace' for big text files: I use two different GUI text editors. Mousepad does my basic editing jobs in a single window, while Gedit gives me tabbed windows, syntax highlighting and (with the Draw Spaces plug-in) a toggle-able view of whitespace and tabs. Unfortunately, both Mousepad and Gedit struggle with big text files, say 10 mb and up. In contrast, finding strings on the command line with grep is zippety-quick, even for huge text files. String replacement with sed is also pretty fast. I recently wrote a simple shell script for finding-and-replacing in some very large text files I was editing.

Does Linux Mint Exist?: In a recent article I explained the merits of Windows XP users choosing PCLinuxOS over Ubuntu. But what about Mint? Do I live in a parallel universe where Linux Mint ceases to exist?

Net neutrality dead for good? FCC may endorse pay-for-play deals: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed today that proposed rules to replace the net neutrality regulations struck down by a court decision are on track for an FCC vote on May 15. Wheeler didn't detail exactly what those rules would be, but The Wall Street Journal says it has a source who knows. "The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal," the Journal reported.

Should Microsoft open source Windows XP?: The end of support for Windows XP has left some users stranded with no security updates from Microsoft. Should the Redmond giant open source Windows XP? Forbes takes a look at this possibility and explores the issues associated with it.